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CANNES, FRANCE—The last time Sylvester Stallone made a splash at the Cannes Film Festival, it was 2014 and he was riding a tank down the Croisette boulevard with fellow tough guys Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, Jason Statham and others, promoting the latest instalment of The Expendables franchise.

On Friday, Stallone showed up solo for a career tribute, greeting his fans with a hearty “Yo!” — and he caused even more of a stir at the festival where auteurs normally reign over action stars.

There was so much demand to attend the afternoon “Rendez-vous avec Sylvester Stallone,” which preceded a more formal evening ceremony, fest organizers switched the event from the smaller Buñuel Theatre to the larger Debussy inside the Palais des Festivals, and beefed up security to handle the hordes.

The 72-year-old Stallone was in a great mood and full of life advice to fans young and old — including one woman who shouted out a marriage proposal — as he recounted the many hurdles he had to overcome before achieving superstar status with the Rocky and Rambo franchises.

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“Never stop punching,” he said, sounding more like a motivational speaker than a Hollywood actor, director and writer.

“That’s how I roll. You have nothing to prove? Yes, you do. You always having something to prove.”

Dressed in a plaid shirt, blue jeans and cowboy boots, and answering questions from festival moderator Didier Allouch, who was clearly a fan, Stallone made light of his public image as a monosyllabic slab of beef, admitting that not all of the 60-plus movies in his 50-year acting career have been winners.

He winces at the memory of such turkeys as Rhinestone from 1984 and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot from 1992, and there were many others.

“My daughters go, ‘Why did you make this s--t?’” Stallone said, bringing a roar of laughter from the audience.

“I go, ‘C’mon, how do you think I paid for your school?’ Shut up!”

Playing a conventional leading man was never an option for him, he said, because he simply doesn’t look like one — an early role in Woody Allen’s 1971 comedy Bananas credited him as “Subway Thug #1 — and because of a speech defect he’s had since birth, “That makes me talk like this,” he said, imitating Rocky Balboa’s grunting discourse.

He joked that he and Schwarzenegger should start a speech therapy school together, “because if we can make it, anybody can.”

But packing on the muscle to play “optimistic” boxer Rocky and “pessimistic” Vietnam veteran John Rambo really takes its toll, Stallone admitted. So do the many real hard knocks he’s taken over the years, including a punch from co-star Dolph Lundgren during Rocky IV that almost stopped his heart and landed him in intensive care for four days.

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“I must have had 30 operations,” Stallone said. “I’m literally bionic. I squeak in the morning — oil me!”

He regaled the audience with many stories about how the first Rocky almost didn’t get made in the mid-1970s. It was considered a “guaranteed 100 per cent failure” by studio bosses, because Stallone was a total unknown and boxing movies rarely succeed at the box office.

“When I tell you I was a nobody, believe me: the year before (Rocky) I was parking cars.”

The studio suits definitely didn’t want Stallone in the title role, which he’d written for himself. They were hoping for a bankable star such as Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford or Ryan O’Neal, Stallone said.

“They would have taken a kangaroo, anybody but me.”

Stallone also had to fight to get Rocky released to regular theatres. The studio wanted to dump it into drive-ins.

But he persevered and Rocky went on to win three Oscars, including Best Picture in 1976. It spawned a franchise that has continued for decades, including the Creed spinoffs that Stallone also appears in.

He had to fight a similar uphill battle making First Blood in 1982 — “I was the 11th choice to play Rambo” — because nobody figured him in the role of a Vietnam War hero struggling to adapt to postwar life.

The film was a hit, creating the Rambo franchise, which also continues — clips from the upcoming Rambo V: Last Blood were to be played in the Lumiere Theatre Friday night before a tuxedo-and-gown audience — and it was further proof to Stallone that sticking to your guns is the only way to go.

He said he has no problems with making multiple movie sequels, because if TV series can run for years why shouldn’t movies do the same? Yet he’s always had trouble getting studio backing for more Rocky and Rambo pictures.

Stallone admitted that one of the reasons he’s never allowed screenwriters and directors to kill off his Rocky and Rambo characters — and they’ve tried to do so many times — is because “I really hate to see people die.” That’s an odd admission for a guy who frequently kills people onscreen, including the upcoming Rambo V, which will contain “serious vengeance” with “a lot of people getting hurt.”

Stallone figures he’s well and truly done with Rocky and soon will be with Rambo, but he doesn’t sound like a guy who is ready to let them go just yet: “If it works, I’ll just keep going, because I enjoy it so much.”

He’s had other films he’s proud about, including Cop Land from 1997, in which he played the paunchy sheriff in a New Jersey suburb and got to prove his dramatic mettle playing opposite Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta.

Stallone said he might also revive his Cobra character from 1986, a street cop he modelled after rocker Bruce Springsteen who was supposed to launch a new franchise but never quite caught on.

Interviewer Allouch asked Stallone: What happened to all the studio bosses who didn’t believe in him over the years?

“You know what? They’re all unemployed now!” Stallone answered with a grin, as the audience roared with laughter.

Peter Howell is the Star’s movie critic based in Toronto. His accommodation in Cannes has been provided by the Cannes Film Festival. Follow him on Twitter: @peterhowellfilm

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